#but it's Hard because your fandom and therefore your job and income is set up to /rely/ on that emotional closeness

[sparxwrites]

@lyinginbedmon replied to your post “…well, that turned into a clusterfuck of a post, all from a throwaway…”

I’m presume I’m the exception and not the rule in this context?

oh Boy, i was wondering when you were going to pop up… :p for those from my new fandom - lying’s a canon creator from a previous fandom that i’ve ended up friends with (for full disclosure: i started writing sometimes-explicit fanfic involving his character, discovered he knew when it was mentioned in a video in passing, and then realised he was regularly reading my blog via a friend, a stat tracker, and remarkable coincidence), hence why he’s asking this question.

i don’t think you’re an exception to the rule, necessarily, but i think you’re an exceptional case, largely because of a three reasons: 1) you have a small fandom, so most of your fans are very able to have a more personal relationship with you than normal, 2) most of your fans are aware of the kind of fic i write, and of the fact you’re friends with me despite also being aware of this, which i suspect provides some reassurance, and 3) a large number of your fans are Unbelievably bold and have an utter lack of shame or fear, which is… quite remarkable, really.

i think if you had a larger fandom, there would be more pronounced issues. speaking honestly, there have already been some issues - interpersonal conflicts and the like surrounding the discord server, fandom wank you’ve gotten more caught up in than most canon creators would be, some of your fans making unreasonable emotional demands on you, etc. - from your closeness, though i’d say in your case they’ve affected you more than some of the fans, perhaps. 

i’d also be lying if i said that awareness that you were watching hadn’t changed the way i behaved in your fandom environment. whether it’s censored me or not, i’m not entirely sure (i’m aware that, since i’ve carried on writing porn of your characters, i don’t appear censored, but there have definitely been things i’ve hesitated to post, or haven’t posted, because they’ve seemed to be potentially close to the line emotionally rather than explicitly. whilst i know you’re okay with my weird nsfw fic, that doesn’t mean i don’t worry about upsetting or offending you, or sometimes about drawing too much of irl you rather than character you into the fic), but it’s definitely altered my behaviour. 

also, regarding the fear and anxiety aspect: when you initially followed me and began to interact with me, though, i was pants-shittingly terrified. i literally cannot overstate that how terrified i was. i had a panic attack after publishing an early nsfw fic involving your character and realising you (and potentially dave) were going to see it. i also very nearly deleted my blog several times during the period where you and dave started interacting with me. and that was with sam and fuzz, who already knew you / both of you, to reassure me that you were decent people and weren’t about to send a mob after me for my metaphorical head on a metaphorical pike. despite all obvious signs and reassurances - and despite the fact that, weirdly, despite the anxiety i almost wanted the interaction to continue? because attention and approval, especially from people who create stuff you like or people you look up to, is an alarmingly strong drug - i was still scared of you.

none of the above is your direct fault, and obviously my issues were entirely my issues, but they’re Issues nonetheless. i think… regardless of how hard they try to integrate, canon creators are Apart and Above fans. they can’t be part of their own fandom in the way that fans are - how insufferably arrogant they’d be if they were! - and they have a natural, inescapable power over the fans in the sense that their fans are inevitably going to look up to them and idolise them / put them on a pedestal. it makes things a little sticky for creators in the sense that they’re stuck as almost a god-figure, but also that their fans want to be friends with the Real Them - and, of course, either the creator keeps up the god-figure persona, stays on their pedestal, and disappoints the fans who feel held at arm’s length; or they drop the god-figure persona, get off (or fall off) the pedestal, and disappoint the fans who feel angry and betrayed and upset that their idol is actually fallibile and human (and has opinions the fan disagrees with / is boring / is bigoted / isn’t funny when they’re not performing / isn’t a role model or desirable when they’re not pretended to be a god-figure). damned if you do, damned if you don’t.

in a way, i guess, keeping a line in the sand isn’t just for the emotional safety and comfort of fans - it’s for the emotional safety and comfort of the creators, too.

so this doesn’t sound like it’s all me being doom and gloom: now i know you personally, i’m very chill around you tbh. i value you a lot as a friend and as an interesting person to talk to. and, ngl, it’s lovely sometimes having a canon creator in my corner when people try to start shit with me. and - as an added bonus - as far as i’m aware, you’ve never stolen fanart from your fans without permission, or asked for free fanart. (okay, so you did get a few people to help with some of the specials, but tbh i feel like we extracted payment by way of endless dick jokes, inappropriate chicken spawning, and general incompetence - plus, we were all your friends at that point, which makes it a different dynamic altogether from acquaintance-fans, and you’d helped some of us with your on youtube videos. i think it all sort of evens out there.) all in all, you’re a nice guy irl, as well as a nice guy in the videos, although not quite the same person in both contexts.

if this all comes across as me having a go at you, then i want to reassure you it’s absolutely not. it’s not even really, i suppose, about you, again other than in the most surface way possible. it’s just an attempt to point out that even the Nicest and Calmest of canon creators aren’t necessarily free of complicating the fandom environment when they step into it.

[preppymayhem]

You make a good point about other characters being made worse so Dawson could look better. Though to be honest, the show did the same with Dawson and Andie in S3 so people wouldn’t turn on Pacey and Joey.

You’re definitely right about Dawson’s being protected by an armor because he’s a protagonist. Everything revolves around him and around his feelings. Characters like Pacey and Jen aren’t afforded the same treatment when they screw up. They get isolated. In S3 all of Dawson’s friends were there for him after Joey ran off with Pacey. And he didn’t deserve it. Kerr Smith, the actor who plays Jack, commented that it was hard to film that scene because right before that he filmed an emotional scene with his homophobic dad. It was like Dawson’s heartbreak took precedence over everyone else’s problems. The end of S6 followed the same trajectory. All of Dawson’s friends were there for him even though Pacey suffered the same fate. No one was there to help Pacey get back on his feet. Dawson screwed up just as much as Pacey. He shouldn’t have invested all of his money.

Also, Pacey payed for the repairs for Dawson’s house. That cost thousands of dollars. If Pacey hadn’t done that, all of Dawson’s income would may have gone towards those repairs. Funny, that Dawson didn’t blame Audrey for destroying his house. Audrey even pointed out that he’s not judgmental. All of Dawson’s judgment is reserved for Pacey. He doesn’t get jealous of his other friends’ success but he gets jealous of Pacey’s success.

The problem I have with Dawson is actually the same problem I have with Joey. She too suffers from protagonist syndrome - as I like to call it. Many of the female writers said they identified with her and the men in charge of she show seemed obsessed with her. Busy Philips (the actress who plays Audrey) commented that whenever she would forget her lines, she would be told “we’ll just cut to Katie, look at that pretty face.” Joey was turned her into a Mary Sue. She no longer was relatable. Every guy wanted her and every girl wanted to be her. All the female characters were sidelined in favor of Joey. She was every man’s first choice. Jen was reduced to a temporary option or second choice (especially in regards to Dawson and Charlie but also Pacey in Four to Tango). During the college years Joey she wasn’t given any obstacles and therefore wasn’t growing. She didn’t have financial issues despite the fact that she was a college student with no job (how did she afford a ticket to Pairs and all those fancy clothes?). In S6 She was literally offered 2 jobs out of the blue without having to work for them. Things seemed to come easy to her and everyone seemed to fawn over her.

I think you’re conflating a few things that are actually related Anon on, namely I don’t think either of those anecdotes about the actors actually relate to the treatments or story developments. I think any scene would have been hard on Smith if he had to do it after a big scene in which his character was much more centered, and the Busy Phillips anecdote relates more to a workplace thing then anything serious regarding the actors. Actors aren’t their characters and both those things aren’t really related to the subject.

Also I disagree re: Andie being made to look worse in s3, or rather the idea that she was made to look worse to prop up PJo the crap writing for her came early in the season before the romance plot was even a thing or set in stone. Through the actual back half of season 3, I think she came off really well (if anything she made Dawson look even worse by comparison). Same for the Jen & Pacey thing, that also ended basically right at the point that the romance started and Jen was never pushed over for it. I actually really liked her little romance with the freshmen quarterback (like not as a serious endgame thing), I thought it was cute.

That said I have a few objections and sort of clarifications on your ask, anon. First, I don’t think Joey is a Mary Sue, but then I also think Mary Sue is a baseless term born out of fandom misogyny and I don’t take it seriously at all as a way of analyzing or critiquing a character. I think you can argue that there is favoritism in how Joey is treated at different points, but I would say that I would favor more gender-neutral ways of critiquing.

The thing is I like Joey, I do think at her core she is relatable and she still comes across as human. Do the writers favor her? Yes, tho I’d argue that it is not her character’s fault that the writers short changed the other female characters in the show. And the thing is that I personally do not care about the majority of what happened in season 5 and most of season 6 that I don’t really factor either season into how I feel about the characters. I am very wishy washy on canon. And also it’s okay that you don’t find Joey relatable, but the idea that she isn’t relatable is not universal. Even with the late season and college years so lines there is still that is plenty relatable about her, and there are people who do like and have no issues with Dawson Leery, I just happen to not be one of them.

Which brings me right down to the clarification that I want to make which I am not nor have I ever really claimed that I am making these assessments from entirely objectively places. So the fact of the matter is at a certain level the truth is I like Joey, I don’t like Dawson and my feelings was that even if he didn’t have The Protagonist problem I still wouldn’t like him for the same reason that I don’t like Ross Geller and Ted Mosby and Xander Harris. Whereas I like the basis of Joey’s character and as such I am more tolerant of the writer’s heavy handed ness or idiosyncrasies with her character, but also less tolerant when it comes to Dawson because it isn’t like that was ruining a character I liked, it was against a character that I already had a bias against, and the writing problems never crossed a line where I ever moved to disliking Joey.

And also a lot of Joey’s worst qualities are alleviated when she is allowed to be more independent from Dawson’s storyline. As I said before he completely makes her worse and brings down her character and plot arcs.

[btsorpheus]

THE HI-TOUCH

I like to joke that on February 14, 2020, I met the love of my life.

I didn’t, of course. But for a second, I fumbled my way through a half-high-five-half-handhold with the K-pop boy group Monsta X and absolutely did not cry, no matter what Rolling Stone attempted to imply. (Yes, that’s me in the foreground of the final photograph.)

The hi-touch is an extremely weird event, to say the least.

Anxious because this was the first time I’d ever attended a fan event, I’d managed to show up four hours early. About three of these hours were spent nervously reading Orfeo by Richard Powers at the Coffee Bean down the street, occasionally looking over trying to figure out when people queue up.

The final hour was actually spent in the line. I tried to make small-talk with the fan in front of me, but soon gave that up when she grimaced in disapproval after finding out I’d been a fan for “only a month” then literally took me by the shoulders and shook me while insisting, “MAKE SURE YOU MAKE EYE CONTACT WITH THEM! MAKE EYE CONTACT OR YOU’LL REGRET IT!”

It was while I was worriedly scrolling through my phone that Monsta X rolled in in sports cars.

Just as I began to recover from the absolutely mind-boggling spectacles I’d already been forced to face, I was ushered into the venue--which housed six enormous cut-outs of the members’ faces. Which, frankly, was terrifying.

(Photo: Michelle Kim. Two of the ���six enormous cut-outs,” featuring Hyungwon and Joohoney, set-up at Tower Records for Monsta X’s meet-and-greet on Feb. 14, 2020.)

I’d probably been waiting in there for around 15 minutes when the employees desperately trying to hype up the room (mostly full of nervous young girls) introduced Monsta X, who suddenly burst through the curtains on the opposite side of the room and rushed up to the table before hurriedly taking their seats (Kihyun, their main vocalist, barely had time to shrug off his jacket) and sticking out their hands.

After that, it’s just a blur.

Writing this approximately a month after the event, all I can remember is the first member possibly smirking at me, the second holding my hand more firmly than I’d expected, the third smiling broadly, and the last two seeming tired.

And then I stumbled out of the venue and called an Uber and was back home, largely unchanged.

(Photo: Michelle Kim. Paul McCarthy, Dead H Drawings, 1968-69; graphite and ink on paper. Paul McCarthy, Dead H Crooked Leg, 1979 and Dead H Crooked Leg Maze, 1979; graphite and ink on paper. On display at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, CA. Photo taken Feb. 22, 2020.)

The Gaze

When recalling the original myth of Orpheus and Eurydice, the first thing that usually comes to my mind is Orpheus turning around to look at Eurydice and to lose her. It’s the climax of the story. And though that Orphic gaze is translated differently in different iterations of the myth, it always seems to be a focal point.

Gazing at something implies a strange binary--it reveals that there is that which you can see and that which you cannot. Paul McCarthy captures this in his Dead H Drawings, a series of sketches of said letter with the space in the center horizontal line highlighted. If you were to look through the legs, you would never be able to see the inside of that portion; you could only see out the other end of the leg like a tunnel. Hence, it’s a dead space.

Even when just looking at a specific object, it becomes clear that you can only focus on one thing at a time. Everything in your peripheral is less easily accessed--forget whatever’s happening behind you.

In Orpheus’s case, the gaze is about confirming Eurydice’s presence yet also losing her. It’s both a moment of relief and of grief, of catharsis and of catastrophe. The nature of his tragedy is that he can’t have the first without the second; if he did, he will have succeeded.

For Scottie, the protagonist of Hitchcock’s Vertigo, it’s exactly this sense of conflicted intangibility that attracts him to Judy/Madeleine, the Eurydice-figure. Even when he believes she’s just Madeleine, there’s an element of fantastical unreachability to her--the fact that she is supposedly possessed by Carlotta. And then when Judy falls back into the Madeleine role, Scottie continues to push her to the edge until she dies a true and final death.

Perhaps this is what makes celebrities such easy objects of affection and what motivates paparazzi. Celebrity sightings, celebrity photos, and two-minute interviews--they’re all small glimpses of a desirable person that we wouldn’t otherwise be able to access.

(Screenshots of replies from Twitter on a tweet regarding how the original poster believes BTS loves ARMY more than ARMY could ever love them, taken on March 11, 2020. Twitter handles and personal information have been blurred for the users’ privacy.)

A persistent phenomenon in BTS’s fanbase is ARMY seeming to think that BTS’s members genuinely love all of their fans.

K-pop is particularly adept when it comes to commodifying celebrities. It’s why they’re referred to as “idols” and not just as normal performers. Their jobs are to record songs and dance at concerts, but they’re also expected to vlog, feature on variety and reality shows, film practice videos, take and post selfies, consistently interact with fans on Fancafe (a blog platform for K-pop idols), be gracious and friendly in public--and on top of all this pressure, maintain their appearances and memorize choreography and lyrics.

Because there’s hundreds of hours of content featuring them available, it’s easy for fans to believe that they truly, personally understand their favorite idols. But idols are first and foremost entertainers. Everything they do is in the interest of gaining more fans, who turn into consumers and therefore income. When taking into account their motivation, does that still make idols genuine?

In Sarah Ruhl’s play Eurydice, Eurydice loses her memory upon death. She must relearn who she was when she was alive through her father, also dead, as he reteaches her how to read, her favorite past-time when alive. 

By the time Orpheus arrives to guide her out of the Underworld, it’s unclear if Eurydice has regained her previous sense of self. And if she has, it’s been filtered through her father. 

Similarly, the return of “Madeleine” in Hitchcock’s Vertigo is a hazy recollection of the original woman.

(Vertigo (1958) dir. Alfred Hitchcock.)

Though Judy is dressed as Madeleine, talks like Madeleine, and walks like Madeleine, she’s only playing the Madeleine that Scottie wants to see. She’s putting on an artificial performance of what he expects in an effort to appease him. The Madeleine that he wants is a cool, refined, and feminine lady. Though not playing hard-to-get, she’s always out of reach as a woman both disconnected from reality and married, therefore unavailable. 

Judy can’t always be that. In the car, when Scottie drives her to the bell tower where the true Madeline died, Judy slips through her Madeleine veneer as she acts just a shade too coy.

Eurydice can’t always be what Orpheus expects her to be. The Backwards Look that ultimately causes him to lose her is an act of attempted confirmation, to be sure that he has her: the “loan” that Hades had promised him.

This Backwards Look manifests in many ways among BTS fans.

First, there are the sasaengs and fansites. They’re in some ways comparable to paparazzi--fansites especially, who consider it their (unpaid and unasked for) jobs to photograph idols at their every public appearance, even if they’re just going to catch a flight, then to share their professional-grade photographs online. Sasaengs take this a step further; they’re essentially stalkers who will buy an idol’s personal information to, for example, share a flight and book a neighboring hotel room to be as physically close to them as possible.

Though less extreme, there are also fan artists and fanfiction writers. Both attempt to capture the BTS members’ personalities and internal lives and manifest them in portraits, comics, and elaborate stories (often novel-length or longer). Artists and writers have to assume something about BTS when creating such content. There’s no way anyone could fully understand what’s happening in another person’s head. And when BTS is constantly presenting stage personas while acting like reality shows, filmed by dozens of cameras and producers, represent who they truly are, it’s difficult to say who the artists and writers are trying to capture.

Even a fan’s desire to stream music and videos and look at photos of BTS is a form of the Backwards Look. They’re constantly revisiting a moment and trying to recapture that first instance of experiencing it. This is the Eurydice moment--the experience of falling in love with a piece of art in a brief glance, and losing that feeling as soon as the moment is over.

These experiences are by no means limited to just BTS. Many fandoms, especially other K-pop groups’ fandoms, all experience this overwhelming amount of content consumption. But because BTS is the current Orpheus--dominating their music genre--they have the most fans, the most fanart and fanfiction, and the most streams. They are constantly under the pressure of the Backwards Gaze.

And they are constantly beyond it at the same time. In Ovid’s telling, Eurydice disappears as soon as Orpheus looks back (“she was gone, in a moment”). In Ruhl’s, the lovers “turn away from each other, matter-of-fact, compelled” as soon Orpheus sees Eurydice. When Scottie finally sees the Madeleine he wants, she dies in the next scene.

Eurydice is always beyond reach. And for every minute of content BTS releases, there’s still hours where they’re beyond the camera’s gaze. Are they the same in front of it as they are apart from it? Would they still profess how much they love ARMY if no one was there to record them? Would RM be as well-spoken? Would Jin’s laugh be the same?

It’s only been a month or so, but it’s difficult for me to recall what exactly happened when I gave Shownu, the leader of Monsta X, a horrifically awkward half-high-five-half-handshake. I tried to record what happened right after the event, but I was so shocked that all I could write for him was “funny little smile,” which doesn’t help much when I’m trying to piece together the memory.

Even in the moment, it was difficult to parse exactly what that “funny little smile” meant. There’s only so much time to think when you’re given just a split-second glance. Had Shownu been teasing, playing the flirt that loves all his fans as idols are expected to? Had he been genuinely excited to be there? Had he been embarrassed? (I know I was.) Maybe the smile hadn’t been funny, or little, or even a smile at all--maybe I’d read the moment all wrong.

Funnily enough, Shownu features on a song called, “Don’t Look Back.”

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[haulix]

The ongoing need for a music media revolution

For the better part of the last decade I have spent up to fourteen hours a day staring at phone and computer screens in hopes of writing something people would want to read. Sometimes I have found success and other times I have not, but through it all one thing has remained unflinchingly true: Getting paid for writing well is incredibly hard. It doesn’t matter if your article or blog post got an artists signed or convinced several hundred people to buy a record they otherwise wouldn’t have given a minute of their time, unless you play by a very specific set of rules, you are going to have a hard time making anything other than memories as a digital music writer.

This makes no sense. Hundreds of thousands of people around the world, if not more, read music news online every day. Maybe they check out tour dates, or maybe they watch music videos when they should be working, but they all rely on people like me and my many writer friends to create content for them to consume. We, like many journalists struggling to pay bills in the digital age, feel there should be a way to harness their need for content to create profitable careers.

If you’re a reader and not a writer you probably assume advertising keeps your favorite site online, and that may be true, but depending on the size of those sites the income received from ads can vary from pennies to thousands of dollars per month. When that money is not enough to cover costs, and it usually is not, many sites will turn to marketing companies that supply paid content for the site to run in return for a few extra bucks. Some companies will pay sites $300 or more per month to run a handful of articles with links and SEO terms intended to help a third party company get more notoriety. Sometimes the content these companies provide is false, or at least incomplete, but in order to get paid the content must run more or less as it was received. Publishers agree to this because they, like their writers, need more to stay afloat.

When publishers find themselves in positions where they are entirely dependent on advertisers and/or paid content they inadvertently hinder their publication’s ability to grow (and by grow I mean cultivate more readers, increase digital reach, and generally raise their level of notoriety). Writers are no longer allowed to cover what they believe is important until they have met whatever agreements they have with their financiers. They are also unable to be as honest in their writing as they would like to be if their publisher believes a negative comment or review might cause advertisers to stop working with them. It’s not uncommon for a site or magazine to choose not to cover and album or event because someone at the top of the company food chain believes negativity may scare away potential advertisers. It doesn’t matter if that negativity is based on fact or if an opinion is honest because money is the ultimate deciding factor in what content gets published.

The restraints placed on writers do not stop at saying whether or not something is worthwhile. Many writers, myself included, have also been encouraged to place less importance on discovery articles because new (unknown) talent doesn’t drive clicks or ad sales. It doesn’t matter if the person you want to cover is the greatest songwriter of their generation or the next act to sell out Madison Square Garden until advertisers feel the same way. It’s a completely backwards approach to covering the best of what’s next, but it’s unfortunately become the norm. Publishers would rather cover artists who have found a way to make themselves known without the support of their magazine, and then hop on their hype train, rather than helping establish the talent’s identity in the first place because it’s more cost-effective to be a follower.

A perfect example of this approach to publishing in action is the career of Chance The Rapper. I cannot think of rap writer who hasn’t been following Chance for four years or more, yet many of the biggest outlets only started covering his career within the last 24 months. The reason for this is not a lack of pitching from writers, but rather a perceived lack of interest from people who negotiate ad sales. Online publications can be far more flexible than print, as all writing is often viewed as potentially good ‘content’ as long as it brings in clicks and doesn’t take too much time away from assigned articles. But you have probably noticed that is also beginning to change as the fragmentation of how and people consume media is more splintered now than ever before with no signs of reversing anytime soon.

And don’t get me wrong,the relatively recent burst of new ways to consume news and opinion is legitimately amazing. We are more interconnected now as a global species than at any other point in recorded history. The ability to express ideas to anyone willing to listen has never been easier or more accessible than it is at this very moment, which is why it is so important that we develop methods and platforms that allow writers of all varieties to find and tell the stories that really matter rather than the ones tied to someone’s click-generated bottom line. The corner of the internet populated by entertainment news and opinion may have been born from fandom before it was considered a business, but for countless writers, editors, site founders, and photographers around the world it is a full-time job that lacks any ability whatsoever to guarantee a return for time invested.

I wish I could tell you that I had a solution. For many months I’ve talked to friends and colleagues about these issues, and to be honest we haven’t made much progress towards finding a reasonable solution. Though we all yearn to see some shift in the respect and recognition given to those who cover the increasingly vast world of entertainment so everyone else can stay on top of what’s new we have long learned to not hold our breath. Things have gone from bad to worse, with the rates for advertising in all forms falling as the competition for those ads grows, and through it all thousands download software that prevents what ads publications can run from even being seen (and therefore helping the site).

Our culture seems to understand that following Star Wars on Twitter and calling yourself a supporter is not the same as buying a ticket to actually see a Star Wars film. Yet many do not understand the same logic applies to the sites and writers who deliver up to the minute Star Wars information on a daily basis. The same can be said for music, sports, or any other form of entertainment. Our culture demands access to the things we love 24/7, yet people seem to believe the people who service that demand don’t deserve much, if any, recognition. Even if a writer breaks a major story there is little to no credit to be found, in part because anything that goes viral is copied, screenshot, or otherwise duplicated and spread without any ties to its source. Remember ‘The Dress’ debate of last year? Buzzfeed was the source of that discussion (they found it on Tumblr), but as the picture went viral the person behind the photo didn’t seem to matter. I’m not saying that author deserve a pulitzer or anything of the sort, but some kind of recognition for creating a topic of global conversation should be given to them.

I’m not saying that every writer deserves minimum wage. The vast majority of people creating content online can barely string together sentences, let alone do so without more than one or two grammatical errors. That said, for those of us who have done the work required to be proficient in writing there needs to be an alternative to what we experience in the job field right now. Getting paid anything is a miracle, and getting paid enough to not have a side job is starting to sound like a feat equal to spotting a Sasquatch. We get the journalism we deserve, and by that I mean we get the journalism we deem worthy of our support. If you know a writer or a group of writers whose work you enjoy and want to see more of then you need to help us, the writers, find a way to continue creating without having to worry about whether or not our words will eventually leave us bankrupt. We can built a better future for everyone, but in order to make it a reality we must work together.

If you want to start supporting writing right now you can always contribute directly to the author of this post through PayPal: http://bit.ly/supportjames

James Shotwell is the Digital Marketing Manager for Haulix. He is also a professional entertainment critic, covering both film and music, as well as the co-founder of Antique Records (RIP). Feel free to tell him you love or hate the article above by connecting with him on Twitter. Bonus points if you introduce yourself by sharing your favorite Simpsons character.